University in Leuven Data Visualization Fellowship 2017, Belgium

Publish Date: Oct 04, 2017

Deadline: Oct 16, 2017

DATA VISUALIZATION AND ANALYTICS FOR THE SAGALASSOS ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT

The Visual Data Analysis Lab and Research[x]Design Lab at the KU Leuven (Belgium) have a joint open PhD position in the field of data science and visualization / interaction design. The candidate will be part of a multidisciplinary team of researchers around the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project, covering the domains of archaeology, geography, ecology and spatial planning.

DATA VISUALIZATION AND ANALYTICS FOR THE SAGALASSOS ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT

This is a joint project between research groups of archaeology, ecology, geography, architecture and data analysis/visualization (STADIUS and RxD). The candidate will be supervised by Profs Aerts and Vande Moere at STADIUS and RxD, respectively, in close collaborations with the other partners in the project.
The Visual Data Analysis Lab is part of the research division STADIUS ('Stadius Centre for Dynamical Systems, Signal Processing, and Data Analytics') and is located at the Electrical Engineering Department (ESAT) at KU Leuven. The lab's main research objective is to support domain experts in gaining deep insight in large and complex datasets and relations by leveraging the power of interactive data visualization.
Research[x]Design (RxD) at the Departement of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, of KU Leuven has expertise in information visualisation (infovis), human-computer interaction (HCI), and user-centred design. RxD’s aim is to derive fundamental scientific knowledge that can only be attained when design thinking forms a vital part of the research process.

Project

We seek to unravel the interdisciplinary understanding of change and its space/time dimensions within already existing and future data sources of the Sagalassos project (running since 1986), which investigates an archaeological site in Turkey and studies its uninterrupted occupation over nearly 2,000 years in all its aspects, from daily life, diet, religious beliefs, to architecture, production, trade and its mechanisms, as well as natural resources and environmental conditions of the past.

Profile

Candidates must have a Master's degree or equivalent in computer science, computational design or a related field, and have very good knowledge of data visualization or data analytics, and human-computer interaction, or demonstrate the ability to acquire sufficient skills in all of these areas. Solid programming skills and fluency in spoken and written English are required and could be evidenced by examples of working visualisations. 
Tasks will include the user-centered and iterative design of visualisations that are able to meaningfully combine inherently disparate data sources from different disciplines (i.e. archaeology; geography; ecology; spatial planning) that are involved in the Sagalassos project, and the evaluation of these visualisations in terms of (synchronous) cross-disciplinary and collaborative insight and hypothesis generation. 
As such, the candidate is expected to merge the expertise from the field of human-computer interaction (i.e. user studies, interaction design, prototyping, evaluation) with that of visual analytics (i.e. combining representation with machine learning; incl. clustering and dimensionality reduction). Depending on the potential interaction requirements, explorations towards promising emerging technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and/or physicalisation are possible. 

For more information please click "Further Official Information" below.


This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

https://icts.kuleuven.be/apps/jobsite/vacatures/54312858?lang=en

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Disciplines

Archaeology

Data Sciences

Ecology

Geography

Study Levels

PhD

Opportunity Types

Fellowships

Fellowships

Eligible Countries

International

International

Host Countries

Belgium

Belgium